How do we create zero waste? Well essentially everything is either composted or recycled. What little food scraps that are left (after our two ravenous greyhounds have eaten that is) are composted into the garden that surrounds our house.

Paper, glass, steel and aluminium cans are recycled by our local council. Printer cartridges and batteries are recycled at special drop off points.

The ash from our fireplace is actually sieved by hand and then goes back into improving the quality of our soil. The few things that can’t be recycled are sold to be repaired on ebay (for example broken electronic components).

We put rusty nails around the base of our lemon tree. Since we did that our lemons have improved enormously! Anything else is broken down into its component materials and sorted.

We also do this by thinking ahead about what we buy and what we’ll do with it at the end of its useful life. It’s not easy. We try not to purchase new electronic devices to start with because we have learned that these are the most difficult to recycle (and they don’t last very long, planned obsolescence and all that).

Yes it does take some extra work sorting our ‘waste’ stream, but we think this is the future, that this is how it should be. Everything has its place.